I posted a comment to the following article:
http://www.umc.org/what-we-believe/whats...-the-house
The comment was moderated; within 8 minutes, the UMC staff deleted my comment. Here it is:
http://www.umc.org/what-we-believe/whats...-the-house
The comment was moderated; within 8 minutes, the UMC staff deleted my comment. Here it is:
Quote:I am an atheist, as are some 90% of the members of the National Academy of Sciences, and while my intellectual and educational credentials are nowhere near those of the NAS membership, the scientific method leads to atheism, as the atheistic stance would be the "null hypothesis" that would need to be adjudicated/disproved based upon scientific and empirical evidence. Few accord fairies, elves, unicorns and the FSM the same faith-based status as Yahweh, the god of the Old Testament, or even old Saint Nick. Why profess belief in some entity for which there is no empirical evidence greater than that of alien abductions, for which there is a plethora of testimonial evidence? Of course, do not confuse "hope" with "faith"; as an atheist, I find the prospect of an eternal, blissful afterlife to be enthralling; so did Carl Sagan, a committed agnostic atheist (which, technically, I am, also.) But, hope does not always equate with reality (read David Mills for an entertaining story of a would-be lotto winner), and if death, in fact, is the annihilation of human consciousness, then lying to oneself about that cannot possibly be healthy; after all, who wants to end life with a lie as opposed to the truth, even if the latter is not the "absolute truth"? After all, if there is a god, does he/she/it prefer honest seekers as opposed to lying sycophants who have embraced one religion out of perhaps an infinite number that exist on this world, and perhaps, others? We should expect more out of God; let him/her/it heal a 1,000 amputees of his/her/its choosing and then come back and talk to me about faith. Until then, belief in God is no different than belief in fairies or invisible pink unicorns.
